Welcome, 2013~! We’ve Been Waiting For You.

“An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.” ~ Bill Vaughn

I stay up for both.

Happy New Year, my blog friends! Thank you for enriching my life with your own photos, writings and conversations. I learn from your talent, I’m inspired by your works, and I grow through your understandings and perspectives. I cherish the relationships we’ve built through these virtual but still-tangible byways.

I hope the year ahead is a magnificent one in every way, with your dreams realized and ambitions fulfilled. I wish you good health (always), a bounty of friendship, love, creativity, joy and prosperity. Most of all, I hope for many fruitful shutter clicks, and at least one surprise package from B&H.

May 2013 be the best one yet … all around … for us human folk and for our nonhuman fellow travelers.

I photographed the Seattle Space Needle fireworks finale from the top of the Magnolia bridge, not too far from where we live. I shot this frame with the Olympus OM-D E-M5 + Lumix 100-300mm • 1/3sec • f8 • ISO200

WoW! That’s a gorgeous image! I love looking at fireworks – If only there were silent ones as they are very troubling to my fur and feathered friends. I think next year I’ll print out some of the best displays and distribute them to my neighbors and urge them to enjoy “quietly” (please). :/

In any case – Glad the old one is gone! Happy the new one is here! Wish you the best of health and peace in 2013! 😉

Thank you, Bea. I think one of the reasons I look forward to the symbolic switchover is because the frustrated idealist in me wants to believe that this will, in fact, be the year when humans finally get it. hehe.

I know what you mean about the fireworks. We were in D.C. once for the 4th of July, and as we were walking back to my friend’s place from Georgetown, a dog went racing by in a dead run. We tried to follow but the dog was just too fast for us. I always hoped he or she was found. As I recall, the dog did have a collar. But, yeah, these human contrivances, beautiful though they may be, often have those untoward effects on our nonhuman friends.

I like the contrasting vibrant colours and smoke. I also like how the window-lit buildings show up in the background.

There is also this sense, when the new year arrives, (it happens to me anyway), that I must internally “blend” my conscious concept of time, whether this is why “introspection” was coined. I can’t help but feel some sort of “societal pressure” that I must behave so human, in so many ways, during these festive events.

Maria, perhaps I’m the flip-side to you on this, in that I actually use these demarcations as excuses to refresh my life. A New Year is obviously a human construct, but I like the sense of renewal I can impose upon myself through, as you say, this conscious concept of time.

I really like how you used the term “flip-side”, another one I looked up in the Urban Dictionary, although I immediately knew what it really meant. It’s precisely learning these idiomatic phrases or idioms that have helped me “blend in” when I’m in the U.S.. Idiomatic phrases reflect the soul and culture of a people’s native land, not knowing them means you miss out on a lot of subliminal expressions that people normally use in their daily lives and work, and if you don’t know them, you’re at a very clear disadvantage.

One of my first ones was a “Pet peeve”. As I took more jobs in the U.S., I learned more of these phrases, and now feel I can truly blend in with North Americans. These phrases are a “must” if you need a “heads-up” in a particular matter. Hehe.